


Guidance

by intangible_rice



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, CEO Caroline, Gen, Mentions of Sexism, Oneshot, inspired by Margaret Atwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 16:57:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18525733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intangible_rice/pseuds/intangible_rice
Summary: An ordinary person, upon hearing the voice of their dead boss speaking to them, would assume they were going crazy. But Caroline is not an ordinary person. And Cave Johnson was not an ordinary boss.





	Guidance

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is folks, we've finally reached the end of random fics from my tumblr that I feel are worthy enough of importing here. This one didn't have a title originally, so I admit that the one I chose here is pretty lame, but I'm already awful enough at titles even when I have more than two seconds to come up with one, so this is what we've got, lol. This fic is very heavily inspired by Margaret Atwood's short story "Alphinland," which is about a woman who takes advice from the voice of her dead husband.

The sound of Caroline’s alarm clock rouses her from her not-particularly-restful sleep. She reaches out her hand to turn it off, and then stares at the ceiling above her. Perhaps she could pretend, just for a minute, that no one would ask anything of her today. That she could lie here as long as she wanted, without having to answer phone calls, balance ever-in-the-red checkbooks, or deal with unexpected chemical reactions down in the lab. Or lay eyes upon that damned computer.

She sighs, almost allowing the remaining feeling of drowsiness to wash over her and lull her back to sleep.

_“Rise and shine, Caroline,”_ she hears instead.

“Yes sir, Mr. Johnson,” she mutters in agreement. She pushes herself up on increasingly-arthritic wrists and pauses for a moment to stretch before shuffling into the kitchen. She'd stopped bothering to make the bed months ago.

A cold puddle of water under her feet further separates her from sleepiness. Caroline groans as she looks over at the culprit, an old, malfunctioning fridge that Aperture had once marketed as a revolution in food preservation. In addition to having a temperature gauge that was never accurate, and creating rattling noises to wake the dead, the fridge uses a special chemical coolant from the Aperture labs. Realistically, it was almost as effective as Freon, and only slightly more dangerous - which was a comforting thought, as it was likely the substance Caroline had just stepped into. She grabs a towel and haphazardly tosses it against the base of the machine, vowing to deal with it later. One of these days she should just throw it out – with how little she actually eats at home, she probably wouldn’t even need a new one.

Breakfast is a simple affair now, much more so than it was back when it involved cutting up pills and mixing them as inconspicuously as possible into unappetizing hospital food that her boss would probably refuse to eat anyway. Most people, although they would be ashamed to admit it, feel some amount of freedom once they no longer have to act as round-the-clock caregivers. But Caroline doesn’t feel any freedom. She feels more chained than ever.

_“Big day today,”_ Cave says, and Caroline nods, finishing up her stale cereal.

An ordinary person, upon hearing the voice of their dead boss speaking to them, would assume they were going crazy. But Caroline is not an ordinary person. And Cave Johnson was not an ordinary boss.

Cave loved the sound of his own voice, using it about 50 times a day to record messages to employees and test subjects. No matter where Caroline went in the facility, there would always be a speaker on the wall booming with the CEO’s voice, talking about science and progress and whatever else he could use to stir inspiration in his tired and apathetic workforce. Those speakers had been silent for months now, but it was possible that some of the old sensors that triggered recording playback hadn’t been disabled. That had been Caroline’s first thought, when she heard him again.

The next was that his messages had become so ingrained in her mind after 40 years of hearing them that her brain was simply on a memory loop – auditory hallucinations were a fairly common phenomena, even in people who were perfectly sane. And if that didn’t explain it, Aperture had plenty of employees that weren’t perfectly sane anyway. Would one more really make a difference?

Caroline doesn’t fight his voice. She likes it. Not only is it a small, sad method of keeping him alive, but he’s helpful, too. In life, Cave had always been the forgetful one, constantly needing Caroline to remind him of his schedule and cut off his recordings before he mentioned something he shouldn’t. In death, it’s reversed. Caroline almost wonders if she’s going to become one of those senile old ladies that can’t even remember their mother’s face. Maybe that’s what the voice is – her brain deteriorating from age or something else. Aperture’s scientists wouldn’t be very happy to discover that happening. How wonderful their disappointment would be.

* * *

Caroline makes her morning rounds through the labs, giving her usual terse nods of acknowledgement to the employees. Realistically, she doesn’t really need to do this anymore, now that she has 20 security camera monitors in her office and can know the exact second anything goes wrong. But she still does it, out of habit – and perhaps also as a way of reminding them all that she’s still here, and still very much in charge.

_“Door lock,”_ Cave says simply as Caroline makes her way out of one of the restricted areas. She turns and enters in a code to trigger the safety mechanism. Wouldn’t want any mantis men escaping. Officially, of course, they don’t exist anymore, and even a reconnaissance vehicle sent into the depths of the facility had come up empty-handed… but Cave remembers, and cannot risk it.

Caroline enters her office, which still feels strange to say. She does like that she was finally able to organize it without any objections, though. She sorts through some new mail that has been dropped off on her desk – nothing too alarming; she can work on responses later today. For now, she has other things to focus on… at least, she’s pretty sure there was something…

_“Planner,”_ Cave helps. Caroline reaches for her agenda book and flips through to today. An investor meeting. Of course.

At this point they shouldn’t even be called ‘investor meetings’ anymore. They deserve something more poetic, like ‘damage control.’ Or ‘Spanish Inquisitions.’

Caroline readies herself, but isn’t sure what for. This one will be the same as all the rest – someone who’s given Aperture a lot of money and hasn’t seen it go anywhere but straight down the tubes. There will be a lot of yelling, a lot of demands for refunds, and, if Caroline’s lucky, a snide remark about how much better this place was run when Mr. Johnson was still alive. Which is in fact quite a pointless comment, since Caroline has been managing the company’s operations almost since day one.

But there is one thing that is different now, and in fairness to the disgruntled businessmen, it’s the part of Aperture that is most visible to them. Cave had charisma, he had confidence, he had a smooth-talking mouth and a fast-thinking brain that could combat anyone’s objections to the quality of his company. The place was hemorrhaging as much money then as it is now, but somehow, those men would come out of a meeting with Cave thinking they’d just made the smartest deal on earth.

And this Caroline couldn’t do. She had kept Aperture afloat behind the scenes for decades, but doing it upfront was not her forte. Facts and figures and annual reports weren’t nearly as enticing as Cave’s visions of doing science for science’s sake and building technologies that would be the pinnacle of human innovation. Of course, it didn’t help that many of the investors she met with somehow did not see her as a CEO and seasoned professional, but instead as someone whom they could interrupt with things like “Honey, I don’t like what I see” and “I don’t think so, little lady.”

Demoralized though she is, she steels herself as the knock on her door comes. Right on time. She gets up and feigns pleasure at seeing the balding, red-faced bean counter and lets him in.

* * *

Caroline listens to the man rant and rave at her, knowing that trying to make him forget about the large amount of money they owe him is a fruitless endeavor anyway. She’s already given out all the arguments she had. At this point it's best to just let him exhaust himself and storm out of the office, never to do business with them again. Just like the others. How on earth did Cave do this?

_“Up the ante,”_ comes as her response. Caroline puzzles over the phrase for a moment – she wished sometimes that Cave would be clearer in his suggestions. But then she understands. Her face relaxes, suddenly meeting the belligerent tirade hurled at her with a calm smile.

“You’ve heard of our artificial intelligence program?” she asks idly.

“Yeah I have, so what?” the investor spits back.

“So you know how intrigued the scientific community is with what we’re doing,” Caroline continues. “How it’s leagues ahead of everything that’s been attempted before.”

“Lady, I don’t care if the thing will cure cancer. You have a lot of my money, and it’s time that I got it back!”

Caroline shrugs slightly, as if admitting a wrongdoing. “Yes… I’m afraid the AI project has become much more costly than we originally anticipated,” she says. “Luckily Apple and IBM have invested so much into it, or else this whole place might be up for sale.”

The man’s eyebrows furrow, his face displaying something other than anger for the first time since the meeting began. “Apple and IBM are interested?”

“Oh yes,” Caroline informs. “When this project’s completed, their stock in our company will probably earn them more money than their own operations.” If it’s completed, of course. If it works. If it doesn’t result in a glitchy pile of wires and herself braindead. She doesn’t mention those outcomes.

“Really…” the investor comments. He’s still sticking to his guns, but Caroline can tell now that he’s interested. He’s thinking that there might be more to Aperture than he realized.

“It’s really too bad that you don’t intend to continue your business with us, sir,” Caroline says. “We have some very generous offers for new investments.”

“…Like what?”

_“Reel him in,”_ Cave says, this time telling her something she already knows.

“10% ownership.”

The man’s eyes widen. He actually stammers a bit before he can answer. “Ten… ten percent?” Caroline nods. “Of the whole company?”

Caroline doesn’t blame him for his reaction. It is quite a preposterous offer. Perhaps her eyes should be widening too. But what does she care? She herself owns 50%, and her hold on that will be gone soon enough. The least she can do is make it a little more challenging for the lawyers later on.

“I… I’d have to see the project first,” the man says. “Just so I can be sure of where my money’s going.”

Caroline feels displeasure bubbling in her stomach. She’d been trying to avoid going down there today, but apparently the old saying about outrunning your demons was accurate.

She twists her face into as authentic a smile as she can muster. “Certainly.”

* * *

“The computer itself is being assembled in one lab,” she informs as she leads their new cash cow through the corridors. “While the brain mapping tests are being conducted in another.”

“Brain mapping?” the investor asks.

“Well, yes,” Caroline responds. “The best way to assure that the AI is infallible is to have a real human mind behind it.”

The man chuckles. “I’ve never heard anyone describe human minds as ‘infallible’ before.”

“A computer may be better with complex calculations,” Caroline agrees. “But it’ll crash at the slightest confusion. Humans are resilient. A human mind will think of another way.”

“Huh,” the investor says, nodding in general agreement. “And whose minds are you putting to the test?”

Caroline swallows, thinking of the transients, the feeble, and the raving lunatics that have passed through the doors of the AI lab and never come out. “Only the best and the brightest.”

The end result should make that more of a true statement, at least.

Caroline pushes open the door, and instantly they’re face to face with a behemoth of a computer towering over them, far larger than Caroline remembers. It’s still essentially a pile of wires and circuits, but for the first time since Caroline’s seen it, it’s not ugly. It’s been adorned with white panels, creating a façade that’s clean, new, and almost graceful. She thinks back – since she usually stays away from this lab if she can, it must be at least a month since her last visit. Usually the work ethic in a lab when she’s not around to observe it depresses her, but this time she feels a completely different emotion.

“Beautiful,” she catches herself saying out loud. And truthfully, it is. But she’s angry at herself for saying it, because amongst all of that paneling, all of the intricate wires and circuits, all the genius technology that they just can’t wait to patent, is something very different. The computer, even unfinished, is Aperture’s greatest achievement. It is also Caroline’s coffin.

The investor wanders off to see the machine from other angles, and to chat with the technicians working on it. Caroline lets him. She herself continues to stare. The more this project comes together, the less Caroline thinks there will be any chance of her getting out of it.

She has her boss to thank for that. This project stands as the last remaining testament to Cave Johnson’s vision. He designed it to revolutionize the idea of artificial intelligence, and to make it truly live up to his expectations, he needed not only the perfect machine, but the perfect mind to integrate it with. He’d generously volunteered Caroline without her knowledge.

Caroline shuts her eyes tight, willing the machine to not be there when she opens them again. Wishing, just as she had this morning, that she could pretend none of this existed. That her life was something she was actually in control of.

In the darkness behind her eyelids, Caroline wishes a familiar voice would come to fill in the silence. But he doesn’t speak to her in this lab. He never has.

Here - faced with the machine that has become his legacy, the creation born of his dying wish, and the sacrifice his assistant will have to make for it in his name - Cave Johnson is always silent.


End file.
